Warsaw Concerto (Richard Addinsell)

Live performance of Warsaw Concerto by Richard Addinsell. The soloist was Chris Hill with the West Forest Sinfonia. Recorded on 11th November 2006 in All Saints Church, High Wycombe. This performance is dedicated to Peter Branson, my first piano teacher. He sadly passed away before I ever performed in public, but his memory inspires every performance I give today.

Richard Addinsell - His Music and His Life

Born: 1904
Died: 1977
Nationality: British

Educated at the Royal College of Music, he began his career contributing songs to revues and incidental music for the stage, forming a notable partnership with the playwright Clemence Dane. He is best remembered now as a composer for British cinema, his career in that medium beginning in 1936 and achieving early and widespread recognition with his score for the Oscar-winning Goodbye, Mr Chips in 1939. He went on to work in revue with the legendary comedienne Joyce Grenfell (1910--79), writing songs with her for West End shows like Tuppence Coloured (1947) and Penny Plain (1951). 

Undoubtedly his most successful work was to be the Warsaw Concerto, for piano and orchestra in the grand heroic style of Rachmaninov, the most memorable feature of the film Dangerous Moonlight (1941). But his fluent and versatile writing was to prove highly suitable to a whole era of British films of the mid-twentieth century, in many instances, as in all the best film scores, contributing independently to the popular success of the film. Addinsell was a match for many cinematic genres: historic drama (Fire over England, 1937, Tom Brown's Schooldays, 1950, Beau Brummel, 1954)), psychological (Gaslight, 1940), contemporary (Love on the Dole, 1941, Life at the Top, 1965) or even comedy (The Prince and the Showgirl, 1957, Waltz of the Toreadors, 1962). He was hugely influential on a generation of British film composers and established a quality and style of full scale orchestral writing that was never bettered.

Richard Addinsell: Warsaw Concerto,Laszlo Kovacs, Hungarian Symphony Orchester, Mi...